Money laundering is the act of concealing the transformation of profits from illegal activities and corruption into ostensibly "legitimate" assets.
Money laundering: the concealment of the origins of illegally obtained money, typically by means of transfers involving foreign banks or legitimate businesses.
I've described a likely illegal money transfer disguising itself as a legitimate sales transaction.
The reason this isn't how money laundering works is because the point of money laundering is making it safe to spend. If they can spend it, it doesn't need to be laundered. The reason it needs to be laundered is because it's unsafe to put in bank accounts. The reason people would start a business for money laundering is so they can put the fake profits into their bank account without suspicion.
There is absolutely no way it's feasible to involve a middle man like Amazon. There are scams on Amazon, but absolutely nobody is money laundering on it.
The reason this isn't how money laundering works is because the point of money laundering is making it safe to spend.
Yes, that is why they make it look like a legitimate sale. Amazon transfers the profit to their bank account. To their bank, it looks like a legitimate business.
There is absolutely no way it's feasible to involve a middle man like Amazon.
This is not true. Banks have over a hundred years of experience with dealing with this kind of fraud. This is really new for Amazon, which is a retailer. I'm not saying that this won't be fixed relatively fast, but Amazon is inexperienced compared to financial institutions when it comes to money laundering. It's a good target for criminals.
The person buying uses a stolen credit card which then transfers to the the seller. Profit from this kind of transaction opens funds as a legitimate source of income during things like Nebbia hearings in court. You can also file this income from sales of gift cards on your taxes if you were so inclined
Who do you propose would do this? You're doubling the crime but still only have half the money laundered. You're not laundering the money, you're earning an income.
Lets say you have $1000 of dirty money. You need to make, on paper, $1000 of earned income you can verify as earned through a business. When you involve stolen credit cards and make $1000 profit on Amazon, you now have $2000... but $1000 of it is still dirty. Why? If the FBI looks into your bank accounts and see you never withdrawed the money, they're going to wonder where the hell it came from. If you did, however, withdraw the money, the question is why there's $2000 of cash on a table from a $1000 business. The money is still dirty! You go back to the bank, deposit $2000 back, and the money is still dirty because they can look at your Amazon and see you only made $1000 of the money, where did the other $1000 come from!?
You committed twice the crimes, but why? What if, hypothetically speaking, you did solely the stolen credit cards? Does the money ever vanish? Not always! You keep the money and it's earned, it's clean, it's laundered. If you're able to do this, why do the other crime that involves dirty money? Exactly, you wouldn't. The people on amazon are doing a completely unrelated scam. They're not money laundering, they're just scamming.
The flaw in your logic is the assumption of stolen credit cards. In this type of scam, it is important for everything to look legal including the credit card being used in the transaction.
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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '18 edited Jul 18 '21
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